This is a request for support to bring together a group of distinguished scientists in the areas of speech and language, learning and education, and human development. The conference will be organized around four important questions, questions that are at once basic to cognitive science, and yet are also of practical and educational relevance: How do people learn to read? How do children learn to talk? What are the important cognitive skills involved in learning and problem solving? How do the various learning, perceptual, and language skills develop? The conference will seek a concensus concerning the answers that modern research has provided to these questions. This will set the stage for an examination of various substantive threads at the "cutting edge," to assess whether an integrated field exists, in contrast to a variety of perspectives held by different researchers working with different methods and conceptions. The conference should have an impact on the future directions of research on basic and applied questions. In terms of its goal of integrating our understanding of various learning, language and cognitive processes, the proposed conference is unique relative to past conferences to which it might be compared. As will be announced in professional periodicals, the conference will be open to the scientific community. Arrangements have been made for accomodations and travel, and for auditoria and other facilities. Arrangements have also been made for publication of the procedings.